Students who are blind face greater social challenges on campus

If someone continually checks their watch, it’s safe to assume they’re probably pressed for time. If they’re staring at you at a party, they may want to strike up a conversation.

According to a renowned 1971 study by Albert Mehrabian, now-professor emeritus of pscychology at the University of California-Los Angeles, nonverbal interactions like these comprise about 90% of our communication with others. Eye contact, Mehrabian found, is a universal language of social interactions we can all understand — that is, unless you can’t see.

(Graphic by Daniella Abinum)

For college students with visual impairments, this makes it difficult to get the full college experience outside the classroom. Since the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, professors across the nation have been legally required to accommodate college students who are blind, which means accessing a syllabus or finding a scribe for an exam is no longer the pressing issue.

The problem is that the unspoken social college curriculum — one that holds some truly valuable life lessons — is not easily accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision

“The resources are great, but they aren’t helping people who are blind navigate the college experience — they’re just helping them navigate the classroom experience, and that’s not what college is about,” Mickey Damelio, a teacher for the visually impaired at Florida State University, says.

“If I go to a bar and I’m not making eye contact with somebody, [other people] are like ‘What’s wrong with her?” — Connor Boss, a legally blind student at Florida State University. (Photo courtesy of Connor Boss)

Connor Boss, a legally blind student at Florida State University, says she has had her fair share of social mishaps. Since her disability is not physically detectable, Boss says she prefers to keep her blindness under wraps.

“If I go to a bar and I’m not making eye contact with somebody, (other people) are like ‘What’s wrong with her?’” Boss, who has Stargardt’s disease, says. “I don’t like to bring it up in a five-minute conversation because there’s a lot to explain. They’ll ask, ‘Well,why don’t you just wear glasses?’ And it’s hard to explain that glasses don’t exactly help.”

But by Damelio’s standards, Boss is an exception to the rule. She’s an active member of her sorority, a member of the competitive advertising team and the secretary of disability affairs for student government.

Even so, Boss says she encounters a few struggles. Like Boss, many college students who are blind and can’t drive must rely on friends or public transportation to get around. In college, that alone becomes a problem. According to Damelio, it can potentially lead to visually impaired students not getting out much at all.

“Blind kids have to either feel like a burden or figure out a way to get around on their own,” Damelio says.

For Tameka Perez, a legally blind student at Florida State, the hardest part is feeling like a burden.

“My friends will usually offer to pick me up and drive me around,” Perez says. “But I’ll usually turn them down and stay home because I don’t want to bother them.”

(Graphic by Daniella Abinum)

While Non-verbal communication is a global norm, Damelio says its especially crucial in college social settings where many darts of visual information are thrown around. According to Damelio, people who are blind end up missing out on a lot of those interactions.

“What happens is that it boils down to the sighted person being like, ‘Well that person is really awkward and weird,’” Damelio says.“And it’s because [the blind person] was deaf to about 60% of what you were saying. Kids who are blind have to be very self-advocating — it’s easy for them to get lost in the social stuff that’s happening.”

According to Damelio, one of the most important things our vision provides us with is incidental learning — those untaught skills that people pick up on their own. Social skills fall under this category, he says.

“Plenty of college students who are blind graduate, but they didn’t get through what sighted kids did,” Damelio says. “Sighted kids learned that it’s not a good idea to stay out until late on a school night, and they learned how to work themselves out of that situation. Visually impaired kids are rarely provided the opportunity to make the decision to stay out late. And all of those things build someone who’s a professional and responsible individual. That’s what creates a real, functioning person, not the degree.”

To solve this, Damelio says more universities need to hire vision teachers. Vision teachers, he says, “fill those holes” and make sure blind college students learn the social skills they’re bound to need in life. What’s more, Damelio says, working with a vision teacher helps impaired students have the same college experiences as their sighted counterparts.

“If vision teachers have done their job right, visually impaired students are going to experience the same things in college as sighted kids,” Damelio says. “They’ll be offered drugs and sex, and have the necessary skills to make the right choices, and not become a victim.”

The challenges faced by college students who are blind exceed just crossing streets on campus or taking notes in class. According to Damelio, few programs nationwide address the real issue.

“They do everything they can on the academic side, but leave all the life stuff aside. It’s just too messy,” Damelio says.

Daniella Abinum is a student at Florida State University and a fall 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.